Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Tales From The College Program: The Angry Lemon

It has been a while since I have written on of these, so I decided to go with one of my favorite stories from my time in the College Program. I have always been fascinated by angry people in the parks. I know its hot, crowded, expensive, and you've spent the entire day waiting in line, but would you rather be at work? Well, what follows is my encounter with one of these individuals.

I'm not sure about the exact date of this tale, but it was around fall/winter. I know this because all of the unpleasantness was the result of buying a hoodie. My co-worker, Dan and I were at the Emporium looking around when we came to the children's clothing section. It was there that we found a girls hoddie that came in baby blue and pink that said 'The Princess Club." On it was a picture of all the Princesses (Snow White to Jasmine). We thought is would be funny to wear them when we went to the parks. I bought the baby blue, and Dan the pink. We went with the largest size they had, (XL) which was almost big enough to fit us.

Fast forward a few weeks later, Dan, myself, and Dan's roommate, Rickli were at MGM/DHS (whichever you prefer) waiting in line for Tower of Terror. We had reached the end of the queue and were standing on our numbers waiting to board. I noticed the woman beside kept turning to look and me and Dan in our Princess Club hoodies. Then she would nudge to her kids, give a head point, they would all turn, stare at us, turn back, and laugh out loud. She had 3 kids all elementary school aged. Now, I have done some silly things in my time, like this hair dye job:

So, a Mom and her kids laughing at our children's hoodies did not really phase us. Then the woman turned to us and in a tone like she was the most clever person on the planet said "Did you guys lose a bet!?" I was kind of surprised that this Mother of 3 would decide to insult some strangers she was going to spend the next 7 minutes with, but before either of us could answer, Rickli came to our defense and said "No, did you?" Ordinarily, a comeback like this would be as insulting as "I know you are, but what am I?", until you hear the description of this woman. She was short, portly and from head to toe in yellow. Tank top, fanny pack, shorts, you name it, it was yellow. She looked like a lemon.

You could tell that Rickli's comeback was not what she had expected. She gave us a loud "hurumph", cocked her head back like the Queen of England and quickly turned her back to us. The elevator doors opened, we took our seats, and the three of us put the incident behind us, unfortunately she did not...

At the completion of the ride I had all but forgotten about the incident with the Lemon. As we were about to exit the gift shop we heard someone behind us "What kind of person wears a shirt like that, must be a real smart-ass?!" It was the Lemon, she was referring to the shirt Rickli had on that said something like "Take your 26 rings and shove them up your ass." (It was in reference to the Red Sox having never won a World Series at the time.) She then attempted to scurry past us with her kids, but Rickli was too fast for her. He countered with "What kind of Mother curses in front of her small children?" She did not like this comment one bit, but she was out of ammo, she kept on moving then yelled out something along the lines of "You have no future/ You will never amount to anything" which may have been followed with some more curse words. Rickli cheerfully called out "I go to Harvard, I think I'll be alright." It was a lie, but whatever.

She took her group towards Rock n Roller coaster, while we headed towards One Man's Dream. By the time we left One Man's Dream the park was about to close. We decided to run back to Tower of Terror to see if we could get one last ride in. On the way there we passed the Lemon and her kids who were sitting on a bench in the little area around the ToT and RnR entrances. She of course shot the three of us dirty looks. We made it to The Tower to see that they were not letting anyone else on. Our only choice was to leave the park.

Pop Quiz: If you are at the Tower of Terror how many ways are there to exit MGM? That's right, one!

We started walking down Sunset Blvd. Before we reached the bench where the Lemon was sitting, she saw us, grabbed her kids and started walking. She kept looking back in terror like she was being followed by a serial killer even though we were in a sea of hundreds of people trying to leave. Her power walking had put her pretty far ahead of us, but as we approached the park exit there she was, talking to security and pointing at us. I can only imagine what she was saying, but I doubt it was "See those guys in the baby blue and pink hoodies, well I insulted them in line and when they defended themselves I kept at it, now I'm afraid they are following me." I knew security would believe whatever she said over three guys in their early 20's so I suggested we go into a store for a few minutes. While we were inside security waited for us outside, when we left they said nothing, just looked us over. Finally we thought, no more of the Angry Lemon.

We decided to skip the tram line and just walk to our car. As we walked down the sidewalk a tram pulled up next to us and by some awful final coincidence our walking was in perfect sync with the Lemons row of the tram. We had not planned, or were even aware of this until I looked over in time to hear her scream "Security's got your number buddy!!" I looked at Rickli and laughed "What number, 26?" With that the tram pulled away and we never saw her again.

The writing was on the back of his shirt so they wouldn't have seen it when we went in. CP's (and CM's) don't get any special treatment in the park so it's not like they knew we were CPs anyway. We put our ID cards through the machine like everyone else and the ticket people don't pay attention.

Well well well, look at this. I can't believe I didn't know this blog existed. I'm thrilled to find it, and to see that the Legend of the Lemon was being watched over, not by an Arab or Jewish scholar, but by a trinket-loving gentleman who formerly fed raw hot dogs to an 8' alligator.